Cast Your Vote: What Kind Of Men’s Movement Do We Need? - In preparation for the upcoming National Conference for Men and Boys a poll has been introduced to allow people to comment (and vote) on just what type of men's movement this world needs. Truthfully I think all of them have something valuable to contribute but at the same time there are detriments as well. That diversity is why I think they are all needed.

The public humiliation of Huma Abedin - This is what happens when you try to turn everything into some attempt at harming women. What Weiner did was wrong, disgusting, and traitorous without question. But no it was not abuse. Unless Lisa Bloom has some knowledge that Huma Abedin was forced to appear at the press conference and/or forced to stay in the marriage after his actions came to light. If she did I'd like to believe she would take direct action.

It's amazing how much fun someone can have with dubbing audio over an unrelated video.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

A few nights ago my dad was taken to the emergency room because he was having trouble walking. Thankfully he is fine (turns out it was an infection, which he is on antibiotics for) but I had an interesting thought after I took him back home today (which is 200 miles round trip for me).

While he is doing better he's still not 100%. So as a result when I got him home I had to do some housework for him (namely opening windows), going out for groceries, and otherwise getting him settled in.

Now to clear up some history my dad and I don't have the greatest or most open of relationships and there have been times when I've become visibly bothered with his requests. Since having a gastric bypass in 2009 he hasn't been able to go more than 10-12 months without having some medical emergency. In my defense it wasn't the times when he was having these emergencies that led to my becoming visibly bothered, however his requests during this times did trigger the response.

So as a result he spent most of the day asking me to be patient, saying he knows I don't want to be there, and so forth. At one time he would have been right but after a while was I just finding myself to be so closed off that I don't even care. I just do what needs to be done and move on.

But today something crossed my mind.

As we all know when it comes to acknowledging weakness men are taught, as a defining part of manhood, that doing so is not just undesirable (among other men or among women) but can actually have a man's manhood status questioned or revoked.

I'm pretty much convinced that men are taught this in order to fulfill their roles in The System. You know the whole routine where a man is supposed to give up family for career, work outrageous hours (and under outrageous conditions), ignore one's one health, etc... That routine causes men to build up a wall over time where they don't allow themselves to be....well themselves. And its not like The System is going to just start changing because it realizes that its doing harm to men.

And I am of the firm belief that building this wall is taught by the father to the son so that one day he can take his part in fulfilling his role in The System.

My dad being 64 years old grew up this way. I can see it in the way that he avoids difficult subjects, will ignore his own health issues until it becomes an emergency, and the way he plays the tough guy to keep up appearances. But I think that in his older age those bricks are starting to come down and the vulnerabilities couldn't remain hidden anymore.

I'm getting the feeling that my indifference may be a step in the direction of breaking down the very idea that such a wall is needed in order to be considered a man. While I didn't have much of an emotional response to him being in pain and asking for help and hearing the weakness in his voice at the same time I also wasn't thinking that he was somehow less of a man. He is just a man in pain that needs help.

Who knows. If I weren't so cold and empty I may actually make the leap to having an emotional response to someone's vulnerabilities but its highly unlikely at this point in my life. However I think I still have something useful to contribute.

If I were to have a son I would have to work to make sure that he knows that ignoring his own well being under the premise that that is what he needs to do in order to be considered a man is not healthy manhood. Maybe by the time this hypothetical son is helping me in my time of need when I get old the farthest thing from his mind would be holding my weakness and vulnerabilities against me.

So am I experiencing a change in the state of masculinity, a change that would contribute to freeing it from its oppressive bonds?

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Yes I know its been a while since you've seen one of these but there is just so much going on that I don't have a lot of time to think about the the events in question much less write a fleshed out article. In light of that I want to at least take the time to say point out a few things so here we go again.

Anal hazing is apparently a thing in American high schools now - The sexual assault of school age boys under the guise of hazing is becoming a real problem. Although I have to wonder when you consider how prevalent the attitudes of "man up" and "sex crimes against males aren't that big of a deal" are I wonder if the incidents are increasing or are we just at a point where these crimes are finally coming to light.

The Straight Married White American Male Feminist Manifesto - It never ceases to amaze me how when confronted with criticism from men, feminists will just accuse them of playing the victim and then end their participation in the conversation (or in this case end the conversation). Edit: At the time that I published this the comments had been turned off. Looks like the comments have been turned back on.

Male rape: the last human rights taboo? - I'd agree that the marginalization of male rape victims is a problem that needs to be addressed. Its hard to reach out to them when the very narratives around rape built around "its something men do to women". Breaking these narratives would do them a lot of good.

Parental benefits and paternity leave - Definitely nothing wrong with making sure dads know that they have an opportunity to take paternal leave but I wonder if reserving time like that (there is a 10 week block of time off that dads cannot give to mom, either he uses it or he loses it) is such a great idea.

Should New Dads Be Allowed To Stay Overnight In Hospital? England Struggles With Answer - On the other hand you know what's not a great idea to foster the father/child bond? Arguing other whether or not he should be "allowed" to stay overnight when the child is born. These conversations, policies, and arguing are convincing me more and more than the whole "dads need to participate more in child care" is not for the sake of the father or the sake of the child. No its for the convenience of mom. Involve dad just enough so that mom won't be over burdened. That's not gonna work folks.

Emma Roberts Arrested For Assaulting Evan Peters: How Common Is This? - I must say I am glad to see something like this in a source of mainstream media, and one that's targeted towards women no less. (Although I can't help but notice how quite the usual "DV IS BAD!!!!" crowd is on this. I guess it doesn't count when the woman gets violent as well.)

Friday, July 19, 2013

Today President Obama gave a speech in which he attempted to address the contexts and feelings and implications of the verdict of the George Zimmerman verdict. Its pretty long (about 20min.) but I think you should give it a listen.

Thursday, July 18, 2013

As you know George Zimmerman was recently acquitted of second degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. This has been swirling around in my head ever since the Trayvon was killed last year.

I was debating over whether I was actually going to post something about it here but after hearing a rather interesting letter that was sent into to the Steve Harvey Morning Show today (and other promptings) I couldn't resist.

You can find an audio recording of Steve reading the letter on his site. I didn't see a transcript of the letter (and I also don't know how long that sound bit will be available) so I whipped one up real quick.

Dear George Zimmerman,

For the rest of your life you are not going to feel what it is like to be a black man in America. You will feel people stare at you. Judging you for what you think are unfair reasons. You will lose out on getting jobs for something you feel is outside of your control. You will believe yourself to be an upstanding citizen and wonder why people choose not to see that.

People will cross the street when they see you coming. They will call you hurtful names. It will drive you so insane some days that you'll want to scream at the top of your lungs. But you will have to wake up the next day, put on a firm look, and push through life.I bet you never thought that by shooting a black man, you'd end up inheriting all his struggles.

Enjoy Your Freedom.

I think there is truth to this. With the case turning out the way it did Zimmerman has put a bit of a bullseye on his back. Sure he can waive around that non-guilty verdict but at the of the day the things that letter writer describes will come to pass. Mind you I think there is one crucial difference between Zimmerman and black men.

While majority of black men have done absolutely nothing to face the reality that letter writer describes Zimmerman quite literally created his own reality. Sure he may think that these events are outside his control but fact of the matter is he chose to shoot Trayvon.

As a black man there is a part of me that wants to vemonously say that he deserves this situation and deserves whatever comes his way as a result. But ultimately that would be wrong. Just because you've been treated a certain terrible way doesn't justify treating others in said terrible fashion (hell for all we know Zimmerman may have some sort of past where he was mistreated by black man and he saw this as a chance to get back at them).

For as much as I don't like what he did Zimmerman is still a fellow man and it would be wrong to wish harm upon him.

I will probably have a few more scattered thoughts on this over the next few weeks but that's all for now.

Monday, July 15, 2013

I'm not gonna bother going into the drama behind it (but if you insist on reading up on it ballgame does so here) and will just skip to the nice part.

A graphic artist by the name of MewHannah-Chan is working on a series of gender neutral anti-rape posters. I'm linking to the post because Chan is asking that the stock images on the site not be redistributed without permission.

I like the idea honestly. For far too long the conversation on rape has been tainted with a "its something men do to women" slant that nowhere near properly discusses such a horrible crime. You can't confront a crime by only concentrating on certain variations of it. (Oh but if you want to bring up the, "But most rape IS male against female." then please follow that up with explaining why child abuse awareness doesn't focus on female perps and suicide awareness isn't focused just on men.)

Friday, July 12, 2013

Okay on the last year or so I've been getting highly upset with Intense Debate over the fact that they simply have not responded to my requests for help with getting rid of the Widget install for their commenting system and putting the Template install in its place.

I believe this has caused problems ranging from comments not showing up, the full web and mobile versions of my site showing different comments (from what I've been told the web version shows them all but the mobile version doesn't), to the URLs of my posts getting jacked up.

And I'm pissed about it.

So I'm going to do something that I've wanted to do for a very long time but have not gotten around to yet.

I'm going to back up my posts and comments as good as I can and then I'm going to do a massive clean up that will hopefully allow me to go back to the default Blogger commenting system without losing comments. I'm going to have to basically do this on my own because Intense Debate has been absolutely zero help to me.

There is a good chance that comments will be lost in this and I apologize in advance but this has got to end because I think I'm getting to the point where if I don't solve these problems now they will become major catastrophes later (especially if I somehow gain any a large following).

So until you hear from me my posting will be more sporadic than it is now while I work on this stuff in the background. You may pull up the site while I'm working on it and see some weird things out of place and even see some things missing. Please don't be alarmed the place is just under construction.

Hopefully by the time the smoke clears I will be done with Intense Debate for good.

If you need to get up with me you can still reach me at dannyboisdotcorneratgmaildotcom or on Twitter @dannyscorner.

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Okay so I've been on a bit of a break from the whole gender thing and taking the time to work on other stuff (namely pursuing my neglected hobbies of anime and video games). Last night was a great chance to do just that when the Bishie and Maverick of Omake Ikuze invited me to guest host with them.

Got to talk about video games, anime, comic books and a few other things.

Licensing

About Me

Who am I you ask? The name's Danny and I'm just a pro-MRA guy that's trying to build his own masculinity and his own place in this world and I'm sharing my experiences in hopes that other people will realize that there is no one "right" way to be a man or to be masculine. Oh but I also enjoy music, anime, video games, technology in general, and lots of other things too so they will be coming along for the ride. If you need to get up with me just drop a line at dannybois-dot-corner-at-gmail.com.